"Jungle Boogie" and "Hot For Teacher?" "Ladies' Night" and "Jump?" "Celebration" and "Eruption?"

Many music fans did a double-take when it was announced that the hard-rocking Van Halen had selected the veteran funk and R&B band Kool & The Gang to be the opening act for its 2012 North American reunion tour. But to Van Halen singer David Lee Roth, who personally lobbied for the unlikely pairing, and Gang leader Robert "Kool" Bell, who happily accepted the offer, this unexpected pairing seems like serendipity, if not fate.

"David Lee Roth's family owns a Greenwich Village club in New York City called the Cafe Wha?, and that's where Kool & The Gang played our first show back in 1964," recalled Bell, whose band opens Van Halen's Thursday night concert here at Viejas Arena. "And when Van Halen announced its reunion tour early this year, they played a show at he Cafe Wha?"

Fast forward to last summer's fabled Glastonbury Festival in England, where the lineup included U2, Beyonce, Coldplay, Paul Simon, B.B. King, Fleet Foxes, The Chemical Brothers -- and Kool & The Gang, which in 1964 was known as The Jazziacs.

"The whole Glastonbury festival was broadcast on BBC II TV and David saw us," Bell recalled. "He went to the other band members in Van Halen and to Live Nation (the reunion tour's promoter), and said: 'I want Kool to be our co-headliner.' Of course, they scratched their heads and said: 'What do you mean?' He said: 'I just saw these guys at Glastonbury and they were killing it'."

Bell laughed.

"David said that in the 1980s Van Halen was the party rock band and that we were the pop-funk party band of the '80s. He also said 60 that percent of Van Halen's audience are ladies and we wrote (the 1979 disco hit) 'Ladies' Night', so it was a perfect fit!"

Another laugh.

"What's been happening is exactly what David said," Bell noted. "Sixty percent of their audience are ladies, so when we get to 'Ladies' Night,' there ain't nothing but a party out there! Those ladies are partying and looking at those guys, who are hardcore and sitting down, crossing their arms. The women in the audience are like: 'What's the matter with you? This is a ladies' party and you better get down on it!' By the time we get to (playing) 'Celebrate,' we got them all."

"This is the first time we've worked with Van Halen," Bell noted. "But speaking to Eddie, David and Alex, they told me that -- back in the day -- they used to play our songs in the clubs in Los Angeles. They played 'Funky Stuff, 'Jungle Boogie' and 'Hollywood Swinging'."